Operations. Sales. Focus. Intensity.
Never lose momentum.
Building a great product isn't enough — you still have to turn it into a great company, and you have to do it yourself. The fantasy of hiring an 'experienced manager' is a graveyard for failed companies. Growth and momentum are the keys to great execution.
Lecture 07 of 08 · Taught by Ali Sina
"The market doesn't care how hard you work — it only cares if you do the right things."
OPERATIONS — You cannot outsource the work for long. The CEO must make sure the company wins. Measure progress and output, not input. Use Task Relevant Maturity to delegate. Look for BARRELS not ammunition. Growth solves all problems; lack of growth is fatal.
SALES — A mediocre product with strong sales beats a superior product with no sales. Your product should sell itself BUT you still need salespeople to navigate and close. One ratio rules all: LTV / CAC. Spread between them = scalability. Free product: must be share-worthy. <$500 LTV: no sales — use ads/SEO. >$500 LTV: direct sales. Sell yourself first to learn what works.
PIVOT — Pivot when you have bad growth, bad retention, or bad economics. Stewart Butterfield: pivoted Ludicorp game → Flickr ($20M to Yahoo) → Tiny Speck game → Slack ($27.7B Salesforce). Pivot or perish.
FOCUS & INTENSITY — Two questions: Can you figure out what to do? Can you get it done? Pick 2–3 important things and work on those. The key to getting things done is to SAY NO. A lot. Don't let your company start the next thing until you've dominated the first thing.
Take these to heart.
- Beware traps: House of Cards syndrome (over-worrying about technical debt — fixing it is growth fuel), Godzilla syndrome (over-planning for 10x scale — figure it out when you get there), Big Press Launch syndrome (they almost never deliver growth).
- Internal transparency around metrics and financials is good. Founders are too scared of it.
- Don't get distracted by your competitor's press releases. Press releases are easier to write than code.
Your homework.
- Identify the Growth Metric the company will optimize and the tactic to optimize it
- Create a detailed Startup Sales Plan
Insolar — Sales is process + patience
An 18-month deal took only 23 minutes of sales effort to make $900 — Customer Acquisition Cost of $41. Reason: we didn't chase. We build great tools, communicate to people who can most benefit, walk them through, wait till they're ready. Sale done strictly through email. Demo is a prerecorded video. Keeps CAC low.
Lecture 07 of 08 · Back to curriculum